The best piece of music writing I've read this year...

...is Dan Emerson's entry for Monday 30 September on his Restate Your Assumptions blog (it is linked on the NYPLM sidebar but otherwise it's at http://assumptions.blogspot.com). I check his blog very regularly indeed - it is the most part film-based - but in particular, read what he has to say about Moby's "We Are All Made Of Stars" - a song which I had instantly and unthinkingly consigned to my own aesthetic ill-lit skip.

The enthusiasm he has for this song, the way in which he is able to articulate so precisely what it is about it that moves him, really affected me; not only in the basic sense that it made me wish I was 17 again (like Dan) but also because it makes me realise how easy it is to fall into cynical cyclical patterns based on what you know of an artist and what you come to expect from them. I mean, the trouble is I know too much about Moby - I'm old enough to remember his rendition of "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" and so the instant thought when first hearing "WAAMOS" was "ah yes, another Moby vocal, yes very good, now be off with you." And yes, "Play" was another symptom of the "praised one album too late" syndrome, but in Moby's case it was about three albums too late - 1995's "Everything Is Wrong" was the masterpiece which should have gone multi-platinum - But this standard of writing inspires me to try to listen to his work afresh, not to be imprisoned by automatic reflex barriers.

The intent of this post is not to become a thread about Moby, but just to say that writing this passionate and innocently honest does more than a library full of old NMEs to inspire me in what I write, because it's being written now and written by people who want to understand the world, rather than those who feel they already understand the world and consequently understand very little.

Wisdom is perhaps the word I was looking for. I haven't noticed Dan posting on ILx (unless he does so under a v. obv. pseudonym) but his is a great blog; you should check it out.